Sunday, August 23, 2009

TWD: Applesauce Spice Bars, a little late

This week's assignment for the "Tuesdays with Dorie" group was to make Applesauce Spice Bars, from pages 117-118 of Baking: From My Home to Yours. I made them a little late and took them in to work on Friday for a co-worker's 65th birthday potluck. This is the only picture I have -- of the few that were left!

Many thanks to Karen of Something Sweet by Karen for choosing this recipe! It's a perfect recipe for a potluck. Moist (they won't dry out while sitting out on the potluck table), flavorful, delightful and easy to make!

I made a few changes to the recipe. I used about 1/3 cup of whole wheat pastry flour, and ended up using 1 cup of bleached all-purpose flour. (The batter seemed a little thin and I was afraid the fruit would sink, so I sprinkled in a bit of extra flour when I added the fruit and nuts.) I reduced the sugar in the cake to 3/4 cup -- next time I would reduce it to 2/3 cup.

And for the glaze, I had to improvise a bit because I was out of cream. So, I heated the sugar, butter and corn syrup together, then stirred in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup (2-3 ounces) of cream cheese. A hint -- it's better to soften and whip the cream cheese a bit before adding it. I didn't do this, and I had to beat the **** out of the glaze before it smoothed out. It needed a bit more sugar to balance the tang of the cream cheese, but the final result was very tasty! I may do this again.

The bars were moist and spicy and very tasty. The apple flavor was more in the background, but that was OK. These may be showing up at more potlucks!

4 comments:

Thanks for info on dividing eggs - I had no idea that you could freeze eggs for future use! That is definitely something I am going to try in the very near future. I do have a scale (which I love to use!!!!!) and so this should be a very easy process.

Your blog is very informative and educational - great job! Thanks for sharing!

About Me

My husband and I moved to our bungalow in 2001 so as to have more room to enjoy the things we love -- gardening, cooking, cats... Home repair is not on that list but we end up having to do it anyway. My personal hobbies include knitting, embroidery, and reading fantasy and science fiction.